The Square that reshaped retailing in heart of city
IT’S 45 years since Eldon Square shopping centre opened and instantly revolutionised retailing on Tyneside.
Named after the city’s Georgian terraces (two-thirds of which were demolished to make way for it), the sprawling £60m complex officially threw open its doors on Thursday, March 4, 1976.
Billing itself as ‘the most modern shopping centre in Europe – in the heart of Newcastle’, it brought the indoor American mall experience to North East England.
An advert in the press leading up to the opening provided a neat insight into the thinking behind the vastly ambitious project.
Question: “How could I have spent so many years trudging from shop to shop in all kinds of weather?” Answer: “Eldon Square wasn’t built yet.”
This was phase one – ‘the first piece in the jigsaw’, our sister paper the Chronicle reported – and it was ‘easy to reach by road, bus, or train’.
Eldon Square was central to a new postwar vision for Newcastle that dated back to the early 1960s.
The planners’ dream in 1963 was to create a system of urban ‘motorways’ bypassing the city centre on all sides. Within this system, pedestrians would be able to move freely within a series of precincts, having to mingle only with service traffic.
The Chronicle noted: “Shoppers will be able to walk freely in a series of covered malls, while traffic is segregated at a lower level of service roads and a bus concourse.”
Shoppers were invited to “60 grand openings” – that’s how many shops there would be in ‘phase one’. The shops would open their doors at 9am on March 4 – and there would be an official opening ceremony at 10.15am. It was all very exciting.
‘Eldon Square: The dream that came true’ declared that night’s Chronicle.
We reported how the first trickle of curious shoppers wandered in as soon as the doors opened. Within an hour, that trickle had become a steady stream and hundreds of people were strolling through the malls.
There were a series of official ceremonies “conducted amid all the civic pomp Newcastle could muster”.
The many dignitaries included the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress, the band of the Royal Air Force was on hand, and there were many speeches and fanfares of trumpets. A sculpture named ‘man and pigeons’ based on a traditional North East theme was also unveiled.
By this time the formalities were over, and as shoppers flocked to shops such as WH Smith, Mothercare, Habitat and Jacksons, the centre was packed with thousands of sightseers and it was difficult to move in the malls.
The western and southern sections of the centre and the Green Market were the first to open.
Eldon Square’s second phase, which would come to fruition later in 1976, ‘would include three major stores, 30 smaller shops and cafes, an additional car park and recreational facilities’.
Shoppers were quick to praise the new mall and its shops. Housewife Mrs Margaret Harmieson, from Throckley, who was visiting with her mother, said: “It’s fantastic. It’s warm and comfortable and you can have a sit down.
“We have found it fascinating, completely new, and we shall be coming back.”
A visitor from London reckoned the centre was far in advance of what was on offer in other provincial cities and rivalled anything in the capital.
It was all so new then. Today, 45 years later, Eldon Square is a North East institution.
By 2016, when it was celebrating its 40th anniversary, the complex was attracting 35 million visitors a year to its 150 stores and restaurants across 130,000 square metres of floor space.
It is home to most of the nation’s leading retailers and has undergone major redevelopment and improvement in recent years, most notably the Grey’s Quarter project which saw the arrival of 20 restaurants at the Grey’s Monument entrance to the centre.
We look forward to the return of ‘normal times’ and regular retail therapy trips to Eldon Square.
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